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Category Archives: Leisure
Make the Homeless Smile
Watch other people making homeless people smile here
Sydenham Arts Festival – Franck Ash plays blues guitar
Catch up with what’s happening at the Sydenham Arts Festival here
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One year after opening the Emirates Air Line is bringing jobs and growth to east London
• The Emirates Air Line is successfully supporting regeneration and increasing footfall in Greenwich and Newham
• Since opening customer satisfaction has remained high at 93 out of 100 • The Emirates Air Line will begin a ticketing partnership with The O2 in August
Today marks the first anniversary of passenger services on the UK’s first urban cable car, the Emirates Air Line, and the Mayor says it continues to play a key role in supporting growth and regeneration in east London.
Since opening, the Emirates Air Line, connecting Greenwich and the Royal Docks, has flown over 2.4 million passengers across the Thames and customer satisfaction remains consistently high. Today Transport for London (TfL) confirmed that it is working with AEG Europe, the owners of The O2, to make Emirates Air Line boarding passes available on The O2 website from August. That means passengers will be able to buy e-tickets for a flight on the Emirates Air Line at the same time as they book their visit to The O2, or their Thames Clipper travel.
The Emirates Air Line was built to support current and future regeneration in east London and the balance between leisure users and regular users will change as this takes place. The popularity amongst leisure users means the Emirates Air Line is covering its costs while encouraging people to visit Greenwich and the Royal Docks. Passengers surveyed since the scheme opened have given the Emirates Air Line an average score of 93 out of 100, for both overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend the service to others.
Regeneration of the area is already well underway as illustrated this month when the Mayor of London announced a £1.5bn deal with the Silvertown Partnership to transform Silvertown Quays in London’s Royal Docks into an innovative new quarter that will be able to accommodate more than 1,500 new homes, restaurants, cafes, galleries and leisure facilities both on and off the water, making it a thriving destination for Londoners and visitors to live, work and enjoy. Work on the first phase of the site is expected to begin in 2014/15.
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: “The Emirates Air Line is doing exactly what it set out to do and supporting regeneration of an area with huge potential to provide new jobs and homes. The £1.5bn deal to transform the Silvertown Quays in London’s Royal Docks is a superb illustration of how providing new transport links like the cable car can be the perfect spur for economic growth.
“As the customer satisfaction scores show, Londoners and visitors from around the world thoroughly enjoy using this innovative transport experience and the new and exciting Emirates Aviation Experience opening in July next to the Greenwich terminal will be yet another fantastic reason to visit this rapidly developing area of London.”
Greenwich will soon be welcoming the arrival of the Emirates Aviation Experience, just next to the Emirates Greenwich Peninsula terminal, and the Emirates Royal Docks terminal will see the world’s oldest and only complete steamship – The SS Robin moored close by and open to visitors in 2014. Other exciting developments coming to the area include a new 452 room hotel next to The O2 with residential apartments in 2015. All of this development will directly benefit from the convenient and direct river crossing the Emirates Air Line provides.
TfL’s Head of the Emirates Air Line, Danny Price, said: “The Emirates Air Line is a great success – not only has it reached over 2.4 million passenger journeys already it is also covering costs and generating revenue for local businesses.
“We are delighted to be working closely with The O2, the partnership is another move towards promoting the Greenwich Peninsula as a destination location and provides customers with a convenient way to plan and book their visit. We will continue to work with the new and existing visitor attractions in the neighbouring areas to help to stimulate growth.”
The O2’s Director of Transport Strategy, Geoff Symonds, said: “The Emirates Air Line has been a resounding success on the Greenwich Peninsula and has contributed to record footfall at The O2 over the last year. The O2 welcomes the opportunity to work closely with TfL to promote the Greenwich Peninsula as a destination and provide a seamless ticketing solution for our customers. We hope this
partnership will introduce new customers to the Emirates Air Line and provide another great experience for customers coming to The O2.”
To celebrate the anniversary the Emirates Air Line has teamed up with rapper Lethal Bizzle, magician Magical Bones, rock band Don Broco and singer Passenger to offer MetroTravel readers the chance to win exclusive performances from the acts in private cabins 90 metres above the River Thames.
TfL announces shortlist of bidders to run Crossrail services
Transport for London (TfL) today announced the names of the companies shortlisted to bid to run Crossrail services.
The bidders are:· Arriva Crossrail Limited· Keolis/Go Ahead· MTR Corporation (Crossrail) Limited· National Express Group PLC
The Invitation to Tender is due to be issued in September and an operator will be appointed at the end of 2014. The successful train operator will start running the first services from May 2015 between Liverpool Street and Shenfield, taking over the stopping services currently operated by Greater Anglia.
The route through Canary Wharf, the City and the West End will open in late 2018, with the full route running in 2019. Howard Smith, Crossrail Director of Operations, said: “We are a step closer to appointing an operator for Crossrail. As our population grows faster than forecast, the case for stable and sustained investment in London’s transport network has never been stronger. Crossrail will help cut journey times across the city and will achieve internationally recognised high standards of reliability, train frequency and customer service. Crossrail will make it easier for people travelling across the capital, helping create jobs and supporting growth and regeneration along the route.”
When the Crossrail services are fully operational they will increase rail based transport in the capital by 10 per cent and along with the Tube upgrade ensure we can continue to move people efficiently around London.Crossrail will set the benchmark for passenger experience for European metro services. It will be integrated as part of the TfL network providing a fast, frequent service linking the east and west and relieving congestion on some of the busiest Tube lines.
Passengers using Crossrail will see reduced journey times and the new stations will be integrated with existing London Underground, DLR and National Rail stations making it easy for passengers to change between services.
Recipe for North Staffordshire Oatcakes
Ingredients
225g fine oatmeal
225g wholewheat or plain flour
1tsp salt
15g yeast
450ml warm milk
450ml warm water
1tsp sugar
Method
Mix the water and milk together.
Mix the salt to the flour and oatmeal in a large bowl.
Dissolve the yeast with a little warm liquid and add the sugar. Allow the mixture to become frothy.
Mix the dry ingredients with the yeast liquid to make a batter adding the remainder of the warm liquid.
Cover the batter with a clean cloth and leave in a warm place for about an hour.
Pour out enough batter on a well-greased griddle to make an oatcake of about 22cm. The surface will be covered in holes as it cooks.
Flip the oatcake after 2-3 minutes when the top side has a dry appearance and the underneath is a golden brown colour and cook for another 2-3 minutes.
TIP:
Try to use the heaviest frying pan available as this will keep the heat constant which is best for making oatcakes. Great served with fried bacon, mushrooms and cheese as a savoury snack or with butter and jam as a sweet treat.
Oatcakes can be frozen and a microwave is the ideal method of defrosting and reheating them.
History, Secrets and Health
I heard that soldiers returning from India in days gone by tried to duplicate the chapattis they had enjoyed but using local ingredients and the North Staffordshire Oatcake was born.
The exact recipe varies between oatcake shops and was for many years a closely guarded secret. There would be an oatcake shop on nearly every street corner years ago. Not just selling the oatcakes but also hot filled oatcakes. This was fast food prior to the Golden Arches and supersize me.
Being very much a regional dish – indeed, less than a county – oatcakes were always missed by ex-pats from the Potteries. There used to be a hotel in Leamington Spa that sent someone up to Stoke-on-Trent at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning to get supplies.
Being made with oatmeal, they are actually quite high in fibre but filling with melted cheese and fried bacon may reduce the health benefits somewhat.
Favourite
Place under the grill with thin slices of cheese on. When bubbling, add a generous amount of Branston pickle and roll up.
You can buy North Staffordshire oatcakes from some of the major supermarkets in the UK. For those poor souls in far off lands, this is how to make them.
New TfL website available for customer testing
From tomorrow (Tuesday 25 June), anyone visiting the Transport for London (TfL) website – www.tfl.gov.uk – will have the option of using a new look, new feature site.
• Customers can choose to use the new website with improved features over the summer
• Mobile optimisation and responsive design make information faster and easier to access while on the move
The new TfL website is ready to enter its beta test phase, giving customers the opportunity to explore the improved layouts and use the more personalised and intuitive features that will make it faster and easier to get the travel information they are looking for.
The current TfL website receives around 250 million visits annually. At least 25 per cent of these are from mobile devices for which the current site offers only limited functionality. The new site, which will be live in parallel with the current site until the end of summer, has been optimised for use on mobile devices and built with a responsive design so that it is consistent across mobile, tablet and desktop. It is cleaner, touch-screen friendly and quick to load while on the move.
The new site will initially preview the updated design and layout, new look Journey Planner and other top level content to give customers a feel for the improvements. New features will continue to be added to the site over the summer and customers are encouraged to test these out and give us their feedback.
Some of the key improvements will include:
• a more intuitive Journey Planner that remembers recent journeys making it easier to check regular routes;
• single fares information displayed clearly within Journey Planner;
• improved mapping and a Street View function in Journey Planner that will be helpful when travelling in unfamiliar areas;
• more live information about the status of bus, rail and road services, including accidents and traffic hotspots and future planned works.
Later during the beta test phase, the new ‘Nearby’ feature will be added. This will show local transport links for all modes, along with live travel information including status updates and live departures. This tool will provide customers with easier access to their options for journey planning. Customers will also be able to personalise their homepage from later in the summer.
Phil Young, Head of TfL Online, said: “We have redesigned our website around what our customers have told us they want. The new site is optimised for mobile devices, making it much easier to access travel information while on the go. We will add in more features over the next few months until we are ready to fully launch the new site and switch off the old one after the summer. We’re encouraging everyone to try out the new features and let us know what they think so we can continue to make improvements to meet our customers’ needs.”
